BOISE, Idaho (AP) — U.S. officials are considering extending the use of an eastern Idaho nuclear waste treatment facility beyond its scheduled closure this year so it can repackage radioactive waste brought in from other states before it’s sent to a permanent disposal site in New Mexico.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Plant at a site that includes the Idaho National Laboratory was originally set to stop operating after it finished treating waste from Idaho this year.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The U.S. Navy’s newest attack submarine, the USS Colorado, will go into service Saturday at the Naval Submarine Base in Connecticut.

Cmdr. Reed Koepp, the Colorado’s commanding officer, says it’s an exciting time for the crew, shipbuilders, the local community in Connecticut and the state of Colorado. The submarine is “ready to protect the homeland and project our power forward,” he added.

“We’re really looking forward to this Saturday when we can introduce the Colorado as an official naval asset,” Koepp said.

At least not when you’re trying to capture them for scientific study, which involves isolating the tiniest of crystals on a metal card printed with grid lines and quickly placing them under a microscope to be photographed.

“They are very tiny and they are close to the melting point,” Marco Tedesco of Columbia University said as he set up his microscope beside a snowy field. “So as soon as they fall, they will melt.”

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Jeff Flake has a direct message for the Republicans of New Hampshire: Someone needs to stop Donald Trump. And Flake, a Republican senator from Arizona, may stand up against the Republican president in 2020 — either as a Republican or an independent — if no one else does.

“It has not been in my plans to run for president, but I have not ruled it out,” the 55-year-old Flake said Friday in his first solo political appearance in New Hampshire. The state is expected to host the nation’s first presidential primary election in less than two years.

Many of them had already endured their share of heartache. Some had been trying for years to get pregnant, suffering through multiple miscarriages. Others had undergone cancer treatments that destroyed their fertility.

Now, hundreds of these women and couples have learned that the eggs and embryos they froze for eventual use in starting or expanding a family may have been destroyed by storage tank failures March 4 at two fertility clinics in suburban Cleveland and San Francisco.

Tillerson, in a message sent to U.S. embassies and consulates three days after President Donald Trump ousted him, also told American diplomats he was proud of them and would be cheering for their success.

“Know that I will continue to pray for our country, our leaders, and your efforts to make this world a better place than we found it,” Tillerson said Friday in the message, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press.

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — Federal officials announced a tentative plan Friday to relocate 20-30 gray wolves to Isle Royale National Park in Michigan over three years to replenish a population that has nearly died out because of inbreeding and disease.

BOSTON (AP) — Boston’s popular St. Patrick’s Day parade is all about veterans — but not all who’ve served in uniform will be allowed to march this weekend.

Parade organizers say new leadership of the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council, which runs the annual event, marks the beginning of a new era of inclusion. The council drew furor nationwide for banning gay veterans from marching before relenting in 2014 and letting them participate.

At 71, she bounces around her property on white tennis shoes, easily climbing the mountain of sandbags that for months stood as a precarious barrier between her home and the rising waters of Swan Lake in Lemmon Valley.

Her husband Mike Walls, 77 and breathing oxygen from a tank because of a lung disease he acquired in the 1990s, is equally cheerful, if not as spry.